In their coverage of the news about the EU’s relations with the Kremlin, Ukrainian and Russian media reported that Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz was calling for a gradual reduction of sanctions against the Russian federation. The Ukrainian news agency UNIAN opened their story with the headline “Austria proposes gradually cancelling Russia sanctions”. The state agency Ukrinform ran a similar headline “Austrian Foreign Minister proposes gradual cancellation of sanctions” as…

Scores of Russian and pro-Russian media (Ukraina.ru, Kremlinpress, NewInform, Kharkov, Informburo) are claiming that the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte wants to cancel all future referenda because of Ukraine. Ukraina.ru quotes Mark Rutte as saying “I’m totally against referenda and I’m totally, totally, totally against referenda on multilateral agreements because it makes no sense as we have seen with the Dutch referendum” and claims that the Dutch Prime Minister’s position…

The latest edition of StopFake News with Irena Chalupa. This week’s fakes include accusations of Right Sector and Mossad involvement in the Marseilles football fan violence, a massive I Love Russia campaign seems a bit sparse, a German parliamentarian gets things wrong because she relies on Russian sites for information and Nadiya Savchenko is misquoted. Again.

Several Ukrainian websites who publish in Russian ( 112.ua, Ukrainskiye novosti, MIGnews) simultaneously published identical stories about German Bundestag member Inge Höger from the Die Linke party criticizing Ukrainian parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy. Die Linke is Germany’s fourth largest party and its most far left. It was founded in 2007 on the basis of the East German Communist party, the Party of Democratic Socialism and the electoral Alternative for Labor…

The West is an Easy Target for Kremlin’s Disinformation, Ivana Smolenova wrote for Intersection. From those who seek to control the minds of others, Russia’s ability to influence public opinion and internal affairs of other countries stands out. The increasingly assertive Kremlin can now rely upon a wide network of agents to help disseminate its message and advance Moscow’s policy objectives. These operatives range from well-run global media outlets, troll…

Along with Russia, one of the groups responsible for the football fan violence in Marseilles is the Ukrainian Right Sector organization. The Ukrainian group instigated the massive violence in order to set up the Russian fans, several Russian sites claimed last week. Allegedly hundreds of armed Right Sector members secretly arrived in Marseilles in a Cypriot boat in order to provoke a brawl on the eve of the Russia-England game…

Russian media reported that “I love Russia” demonstrations took place simultaneously in 15 American states and hundreds of people took to central city squares to declare their love of Russia on the Russian national holiday known as Russia Day. The segment shown on Russia’s Channel Five television however, shows only a small number of people. The television presenter declares that prominent politicians and actors also participated in these American outpourings…

Less than six percent of residents in unoccupied eastern Ukraine watch programs about politics on Russian television every day, a new study by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology finds, Alexandra Markovich wrote for Kyiv Post. The study, which was conducted from May 20 to June 2, 2016, found that Ukrainian national television channels were the dominant source of political news in eastern Ukrainian, as well as throughout the country.…

Since the 1920s, generations of western Europeans got used to the monopoly of public radio and later public television. These broadcasters developed strategies to better serve audiences and distance themselves from governments. The arrival of private broadcasters, in many cases taking place only in the 1970’s, was generally viewed as a complimentary service aimed at entertaining the public. Although public service broadcasting lost market share, it remained a respected institution…

The new propagandists who dominated the Russian media were formed by the experience of the trauma of the 1990s and the loss of the certainties of the Soviet past. Their ideology is a fusion of Soviet and imperial Russian ideas. Its chief intellectual weakness is that it must link Russian success to the failure of the West and democracy.For the last two years, propaganda in the Russian media has been…